no third solution

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Category Archives: Democracy is Great!

Michigan’s New Taxes

October 1st, 2007

If you live in Michigan, your state income tax bill just went up about 12%. In order to end the “shutdown,” legislatures voted to raise the income tax from 3.9% to 4.35%.

They also approved a measure which allows them to start arbitrarily taxing certain services. Aside from the obvious culprits (e.g., strong lobbies against the tax by cable carriers and sports teams) there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the program’s carve-outs. For instance:

Cable television will avoid the surcharge, but investment advising will not. Manicures and tanning will be taxed, haircuts will not be. Lift tickets will be taxed, but not greens fees at the local golf club. Keeping your motorcycle in storage for the winter will be taxable, but keeping your boat at the marina for the winter will be tax-free.

Say what you will about the merits and demerits of democracy – but I don’t know a single person who is happy to pay an extra six percent for anything. If this measure had been put to a popular vote, it likely would’ve been close to unanimity, against either the income tax increase, or the new excises.

“Representative,” my ass.

Hillary “Money Grows on Trees” Clinton

September 28th, 2007

One can only speculate as to how Hillary intends to provide $5000 “baby bonds to each and every child born in the US of A. Hillary admits that even she doesn’t know where the money will come from:

“I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that downpayment on their first home,” she said.

The New York senator did not offer any estimate of the total cost of such a program or how she would pay for it. Approximately 4 million babies are born each year in the United States.

Clinton said such an account program would help Americans get back to the tradition of savings that she remembers as a child, and has become harder to accomplish in the face of rising college and housing costs.

She argued that wealthy people “get to have all kinds of tax incentives to save, but most people can’t afford to do that.”

Yeah. I like the idea of “giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account,” too. Except for the pesky detail of from whence comes that $5,000. You can bet your ass it’s not coming from cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.

Here’s an estimate: 4,000,000 babies x $5000/baby = $20,000,000,000. That’s $20 billion. Clearly, H-rod is not smarter than a fifth grader. The “tradition of saving,” meanwhile, is always about foregoing current consumption in favor of future consumption. But this is hard to do when the government taxes the bejeezus out of your income, and decimates the rest of it through inflation. Rising college costs are directly correlated to the governments involvement in the student loan market, without which it’s almost impossible to afford a four-year degree anymore, unless you’re already wealthy. The dastardly rich, who “have all kinds of tax incentives to save” are not the problem. Instead, it is the unscrupulous tax disincentives that are continuously piled on the working stiff. The single greatest impediment to the poor is likely the OASDI/SS portion of their tax withholdings, but the fact that personal expenditures on future care and health insurance are not tax deductible doesn’t help, either.

Because the government produces nothing of value, anywhere, ever, but instead is solely a destroyer of wealth and products, what is almost certain is that this “baby-bond” will be in the form of an IOU from the federal government, to the federal government, financed by future taxes.

For the children.

Racial Profiling for Thee, Not for Me

September 14th, 2007

This was almost included in the Questions earlier, but I feel deserves a stand-alone entry.

Keeping in mind that the state is nearly bankrupt, the following is analogous to buying another pack of cigarettes with the last welfare check:

Although profiling is a useful pseudo-science in law-enforcement and apprehension, most people dislike “racial profiling” in most other circumstances (e.g., driving while black). Of course the proper scope of profiling is limited to describing the likely tendencies, habits, and character traits of an unknown subject with regards to a known crime, or series of crimes.

Profiling is used properly to discover criminals when a crime is known to have been committed, not crimes. There is a subtle, but necessary distinction. Otherwise, we’d have to detain every single, white male in his thirties, these being statistically most likely to be serial killers.

So what about a State law that would deny revenue-sharing dollars to communities who have laws against racial profiling on their books? Would it make a difference if we’re talking about Guatemálans and Mexicans instead of Blacks?

Aside from the aforementioned “low-hanging fruit” problem, there is clearly insufficient cause to assume that everyone who “looks like a Mexican,” (whatever that means) actually is a Mexican (and not instead a Filipino or a Portuguese, a naturalized citizen, or a born-and-bred citizen of Mexican ancestry), let alone to assume that said person who “looks like a Mexican” is also violating an immigration law. It is facially absurd, and ultimately boils down to payment for profiling, by the State, to a municipality. Or if you’d rather, from those municipalities who abhor the idea of profiling, to those municipalities who embrace it.

How charming. But, what did you expect?

no third solution

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